I have a strange phenomena which I cannot solve but perhaps someone here can help me out.
Some background:
Running on a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-U4TH with 16G memory and an Intel i7-3770 CPU with HD4000 video
Gigabyte UEFI Dual Bios Bootmode selection is set to Leagacy only (so the UEFI & Legacy mode is off andhas always been off)
I use hard disk cartridges which makes it very easy to swap sata disks. (no hot swap)
Have been using Win 7 Pro for along time with the extensive use of the backup & restore facility(WindowsImageBackup) to a second or third mounted hard disk in the same PC.
I migrated recently a dedicated Win7 hard disk to Win8.0 while still using WindowsImageBackup as before, and everything wasworking perfectly. Whole process done with Bootmode=Legacyonly
Last week I decided to install the win 8.1 preview build 9600 in preparation to the forthcoming launch so I could test it a bit. The installation went smooth. I did use a separate hard disk - so no upgrade from 8.0 to 8.1 My disks are MBR not GPT with again Bootmode=Legacy only
I know from this forum that in 8.1 the WindowsImageBackup facility is now well hidden but can still be used. So I wanted an image of my "new"W8.1 to a second hard disk in the PC - this exactly as I have been doing for avery long time in W7 & W8.
The problem:
Powered down my PC, inserted a second hard disk into it's cartridge, and powered it up again. Win 8.1 came up -> selected Filehistory -> system image backup -> started the process, but I got the message that no disk was found to place the image upon. Went to disk management as I suspected that no driveletter was allocated. To my surprise there was no other disk listed then disk C:
Went to the bios and found the second hard disk properly reported. I tried several other disks all with the same result, this just to make sure that the disk was okay. Also in my other PC (I have 2 similar PC's) all disks were working perfectly. (The 2nd system still runs on Win7.)
For clarity - none of this is happening in Win8.0 - there I can manipulate to my heart's content with images and hard disks - all under legacy mode with not a single problem what so ever.
When I change my bios to UEFI &Legacy - I do see the second hard disk, I can make an image, but when I want to restore it windows 8.1 gives me an error back saying in abbreviated form "cannot restore as system copy made on PC with BIOS while this PC is using EFI. I more or less expected to see this error.
I suspect that if I would regenerate a brand new system disk from scratch in UEFI (with GPT?) the problem might not exist - however that would imply that I have to reinstall all of my software on a new Win 7 copy, migrate to Win 8 (own upgr copy only) and then to Win 8.1 - for obvious reasons I am not very keen to do so.
Although I have 25yrs + of PC experience I fear that I may be overlooking something obvious
-- or is this a bug in win 8.1 as win 8.0 is okay?
I have searched this forum but found nothing similar to my problem.
I would be very grateful for some help & advice
Some background:
Running on a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-U4TH with 16G memory and an Intel i7-3770 CPU with HD4000 video
Gigabyte UEFI Dual Bios Bootmode selection is set to Leagacy only (so the UEFI & Legacy mode is off andhas always been off)
I use hard disk cartridges which makes it very easy to swap sata disks. (no hot swap)
Have been using Win 7 Pro for along time with the extensive use of the backup & restore facility(WindowsImageBackup) to a second or third mounted hard disk in the same PC.
I migrated recently a dedicated Win7 hard disk to Win8.0 while still using WindowsImageBackup as before, and everything wasworking perfectly. Whole process done with Bootmode=Legacyonly
Last week I decided to install the win 8.1 preview build 9600 in preparation to the forthcoming launch so I could test it a bit. The installation went smooth. I did use a separate hard disk - so no upgrade from 8.0 to 8.1 My disks are MBR not GPT with again Bootmode=Legacy only
I know from this forum that in 8.1 the WindowsImageBackup facility is now well hidden but can still be used. So I wanted an image of my "new"W8.1 to a second hard disk in the PC - this exactly as I have been doing for avery long time in W7 & W8.
The problem:
Powered down my PC, inserted a second hard disk into it's cartridge, and powered it up again. Win 8.1 came up -> selected Filehistory -> system image backup -> started the process, but I got the message that no disk was found to place the image upon. Went to disk management as I suspected that no driveletter was allocated. To my surprise there was no other disk listed then disk C:
Went to the bios and found the second hard disk properly reported. I tried several other disks all with the same result, this just to make sure that the disk was okay. Also in my other PC (I have 2 similar PC's) all disks were working perfectly. (The 2nd system still runs on Win7.)
For clarity - none of this is happening in Win8.0 - there I can manipulate to my heart's content with images and hard disks - all under legacy mode with not a single problem what so ever.
When I change my bios to UEFI &Legacy - I do see the second hard disk, I can make an image, but when I want to restore it windows 8.1 gives me an error back saying in abbreviated form "cannot restore as system copy made on PC with BIOS while this PC is using EFI. I more or less expected to see this error.
I suspect that if I would regenerate a brand new system disk from scratch in UEFI (with GPT?) the problem might not exist - however that would imply that I have to reinstall all of my software on a new Win 7 copy, migrate to Win 8 (own upgr copy only) and then to Win 8.1 - for obvious reasons I am not very keen to do so.
Although I have 25yrs + of PC experience I fear that I may be overlooking something obvious
-- or is this a bug in win 8.1 as win 8.0 is okay?
I have searched this forum but found nothing similar to my problem.
I would be very grateful for some help & advice
My Computer
System One
-
- OS
- win8.0
- Computer type
- PC/Desktop
- CPU
- Intel Core i7-3770
- Motherboard
- Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP4 TH
- Memory
- 16G
- Graphics Card(s)
- Intel 4000
- Browser
- IE9
- Antivirus
- McAfee